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This event forms part of a national roadshow to disseminate the findings of the 3-year AHRC funded project,  The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context and is the last event of the project.  More than six years ago the Refugee and Migrant Centre in Wolverhampton contacted the media to report the case of a woman, Paulette Wilson, who was being threatened with deportation after 50 years in Britain. This case and many others like it started to be reported with regularity by the Guardian newspaper in November 2017.  The Windrush scandal that we are now all familiar with was eventually forced onto the political agenda in April 2018 during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. 

Without the testimony of the late Paulette Wilson – who also notably spent the last two-and-a-half years of her life as a Windrush campaigner – the scandal may have remained hidden for much longer.  Wolverhampton thereby stands out as the most fitting location to round off the project.

The aim of this roadshow is to disseminate research outputs, which have been created as part of the project’s unique study of the Windrush Scandal in the context of UK-Caribbean and Commonwealth transnational relations.

The project’s team – Professor Philip Murphy, Dr Rob Waters, Dr Juanita Cox and Dr Eve Hayes De Kalaf – hope that these research outputs/resources, will be used by academics in diverse fields (e.g., political science, international relations, sociology, public policy, and public health research); students producing undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations; secondary school teachers, as well as individuals, organisations and researchers working outside the academy.  


Dr Juanita Cox’s talk will provide an overview of the project’s website, where audio excerpts from sixty major oral history interviews of one-to-four hours in length, are being made available alongside podcasts, and other educational material.  She will also speak to some of the project’s findings by drawing upon on the many interviews with survivors of the scandal as well as their advocates (e.g., church elders, lawyers, journalists, MPs, councillors, charity officials, diplomats, community leaders, campaigners, and activists); Home Office officials; Caribbean NGOs, academics, and museum officials.  Dr Cox hopes in doing so to offer a glimpse into the long and complex history of the Windrush scandal, its impact on the descendants of the Windrush Generation and wider Commonwealth as well as the links between the apparently distinct spheres of community activism, investigative journalism and international diplomacy.

Speaker: Juanita Cox gained her PhD in 2013 from the Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham, and is a winner of the prestigious RE Bradbury Memorial Prize. She is currently working at the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) on a three-year, AHRC-funded project, The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context.  Cox has a keen interest in oral history as a research methodology working with Caribbean communities.   She is a trustee on the board of the Oral History Society (OHS), the convenor of their Migration Special Interest Group (SIG) and a member of the OHS’s In Dialogue steering committee. Future plans include a jointly-authored monograph on The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth context.

All welcome- this event is free to attend, but booking is required.

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